


Remedial

by Uakari



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5479598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uakari/pseuds/Uakari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Levi is the most unsuitable Anatomy Professor to ever exist, but at least he smells better than his office mate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remedial

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Theeio](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Theeio).



> Secret Santa Exchange 2015 For theeio.tumblr.com! Merry Christmas!
> 
> (My one-year-old was very, very anxious to wish you Merry Christmas and took every available opportunity to do so. I am 99.9% sure I have edited out all of the "lkasdddddddddjrieomafc"s and "6541352894566666666"s, but in case I missed one, no, I did not suddenly have a seizure while writing...I just have a very spirited "helper"!)

_There’s something wrong with this one._

It had been Levi’s first thought upon encountering his colleague in the Anatomical Sciences Department, and had become something of a repeating chorus in the days following, playing like background music over her more insane antics. Now, in the second month of his post-doctoral fellowship, it had become as constant as the beating of his heart, banging away in the dark corners of his brain that really ought to be occupied with something more important, like flossing his teeth or cleaning out the last bits of…well, he didn’t like to think too hard on exactly _what_ it was littering every goddamned surface in Erwin’s laboratory. He only knew he’d been trying since September to be rid of it, and he was now well into November with only minimal progress.

_She was on top of the cadaver. Again._

He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d taken this job in the first place. He’d expected a few more months to put his CV out there, interview at a few more…highly regarded institutions, or at least one whose accreditation didn’t seem to teeter on the edge of a blade. He’d never given two fucks about name or prestige – he just wanted a place to work, damn it – but it was proving difficult to stay motivated when day by day another of his colleagues met their tenure’s end beneath the heel of an administrator’s boot. In theory, he shouldn’t have been worried, as he was technically research staff, paid for by Erwin’s grant. The university wouldn’t just up and fire him when someone else was paying his salary. In practice, however, it meant that he got stuck with teaching duty to make up for the lost instructors. Erwin hadn’t made any bones about the state of the department or even the university when he hired him on ( _“It’s a shit-show staged inside a shit-ring circus!”_ had been his exact words), but he’d seemed so convinced that they could make a difference ( _“There’s a shortage of talented doctors because medical school has become too expensive and too exclusive. It is our duty to provide top-notch education to students who can’t afford to take $100,000 loans or piddle away their undergraduate training on an Underwater Basket Weaving Degree to keep their grades inflated!”_ ).  He'd spent too much time living at the bottom of life's barrel to not see the benefit of this, and he was drawn in, however much he wanted to fight it.

And apart from everything else, he was out of options. He’d graduated with his own doctorate in May and by June Farlan and Isobel – his roommates and compatriots in graduate school bondage – had both left for greener pastures and promises of tenure. By July he was subsisting on a diet on ramen and pop tarts, and by August owed more in back-rent than his life was probably worth.  When that lone job-offer – wrinkled, coffee-stained but signed by Actual Doctor Erwin Smith – had finally rolled in, it hadn’t mattered anymore that the university was a shady, two-horse operation situated in Outer Bumfuck; he’d accepted without hesitation.

Which, if he was being fair, was probably how he ended up with a colleague who found nothing wrong, or even out of the ordinary, about straddling a cadaver with her head buried between its knees.

_Oh, god. What was she_ doing _in there?_

Experience had been a harsh mistress; he knew damned well that interrupting her and making a scene would only be bringing more trouble on himself. She was likely to take out an eyeball (his) or sever a major artery (also his) while flailing around with a scalpel, trying to explain herself. Still, though. From what he’d picked up in faculty meetings, the department had enough trouble finding body donors for this course – all it took was word to get that she treated them like own personal playground, bucking around like a rodeo clown and flinging parts around willy-nilly-

_Shit, she_ was _flinging parts around._

With an exasperated hiss, he quickly wiped his probe and forceps clean and slapped them down – perhaps a little too forcefully – against the metal examination table where he’d been steadfastly ignoring a group of students. It was easy enough to slip through the gaggle of them while they were busy poring over palmar artery arches and other minutia and insert himself into the similarly white-coated crowd at the foot of her table. This particular group of students was far less rowdy than the one he’d been assigned to, but that was probably more to do with staring gawp-jawed at the grotesque spectacle playing out before them than any sort of innate quietness.

“Hange,” Levi said quietly, trying to draw her attention without drawing the students’. When she failed to so much as even flinch at the sound of her surname, he switched to his preferred method of discourse. "The fuck are you doing?”

“I can’t hear you – Jesus Shit these thighs cancel noise better than ear plugs!” Hange paused for a moment, chuckling at her own joke, then hazarded a glance upward to see which of the students had dared disturb her.  She grinned at him. “Levi! What brings you this way? Need a demonstration?”

“No, I-”

“That’s probably good, because I’m having an issue with the rectum here.”

“I don’t need to know that.”

“No, but you probably want to move.”

“Why-” he started, but was silenced by a loud _RIP-POP._

The answer slapped him in the face not a moment later, or would have, had he been a few inches taller. That honor instead went to an unfortunate medical student, who promptly gagged and dropped to the floor in the fetal position.

“Don’t worry!” she shouted, standing triumphantly on the exam table, prize lifted high over her head, god-knows-what dripping and dribbling down onto her dissection goggles, “It’s just some of that scar tissue we were talking about. Man was that a mess – Levi, come look at how badly this sigmoid colon is still plastered to the walls in here. I can’t believe I got the rectum out in one piece.”

“Um, Dr. Hange,” one of the students piped up, “I think Eren fell on his scalpel.”

“He’s fine,” Hange waved this away with a chuckle, “It’s just embalming fluid.”

“No, I think he really did,” another voice chimed in.

Levi stepped to the side for a better look and, sure as shit, there was the scalpel, embedded in the kid’s arm. “Don’t just stand there, get him out of here!” he barked at one particularly concerned-looking student, who for some inexplicable reason had draped a red scarf over her lab coat.

“Mikasa, would you?” Hange twittered from her perch. For a moment, she almost looked almost apologetic. However, if Levi thought she might adjust her teaching methods to prevent future stabbings or even get the hell off the table, he was sorely mistaken. “The rest of you, come back over here. You can sort of see the branching of the Internal Iliac artery now, if I just get-” she paused, grunting with the effort of ripping away bits of connective tissue with her fingers, “Some of this shit off-”

“Someone had better clean this shit off the floor,” Levi insisted, but was lost in a sea of shuffling white coats as the students crowded in for a better view of the dissection. “Oi, you can’t just leave this here. It’s a biohazard. Are you all idiots?”

“It’s fine, Levi, everything in here is a biohazard,” Hange reassured him.

“You’ve got biohazard dripping from your glasses,” he shot back, tiptoeing away from the seeping blood puddle. He needed a mop, and he needed it now.

“It’s just embalming fluid,” she said again, as if it meant nothing to her. Levi recoiled in disgust.

_Mop. Mop_ now _. Mop mop mop mop. And some fucking soap, to boot._

The trough sinks were at the front of the dissection lab; if he kept backing away slowly, he was bound to run into them sooner or later. He’d make his way to them and then battle his way through the student mob with a mop and bucket if he had to.

“They call her The Butcher.”

Levi spun around to find Erwin watching Hange’s table-top lecture with a bizarre mix of adulation and outright terror. He snorted derisively, “I can think of a few things to call her.”

“Her lectures are amazing, but her dissecting work needs a bit of…polish. I hear your technique-”

“There’s a shoe-shine boy down at the train station, Erwin,” Levi cut him off, “Who can polish whatever you need. I can’t fix stupid.”

Erwin let out a hearty laugh at this, for some reason Levi couldn’t possibly fathom. Instead of wasting his time trying, he sidestepped  Erwin altogether and doubled his pace toward the sinks. He shook his head and cast one final glance over his shoulder to gauge the size of the mess.

_There’s still shit dripping from her glasses._

* * *

_October 15, 2015_

**Inbox (4)**

o « Isobell                **THIS OFFICE IS HUUUUUGE** – holy I can’t believe this is all for me what is this even…   

o « Farlan                 **Teaching bullshit** – man, can you believe they’ve got me lecturing four courses this…

o « Farlan                 **Water Bill** – why am I getting a bill from NYC water wupply? Didn’t we pay this?

o « Isobell                **DUDE** – did you see this paper in AR? Who the hell do these bitches think they…   

o « Erwin Smith        **Lab** – Levi, I will make this worth your while. I can’t lose another faculty member…     

* * *

  _This deserves a raise in pay._

Contrary to any of the platitudes Erwin wanted to spew, it wasn’t possible to polish shit. It was, however, possible to smooth out the edges a little.

“So, are you our instructor for today, or…?”

Levi didn’t bother to looking up from the dissection field; he recognized the voice. It was the Red-Scarf-Girl again, along with her friend who couldn’t be trusted with sharp objects and the blond kid who followed them everywhere like a lost puppy. “You’re early,” he said cooly, “Come back when lab starts.”

“But you’re cutting our cadaver.”

“You’re early,” Levi repeated.

“We need to study.”

“Then go study.”

“We need our cadaver.”

“There are fifteen cadavers in this lab, go and find one to study on.”  He was nearly finished with the dissection, but they didn’t need to know that. The last thing he wanted was an audience as he freed the last of the cervical nerves from their hellish fascia; if he snapped them off now, this entire exercise would be completely futile.

“But Eren dissected _this_ one.”

“And?”

“He needs to pass this course.”

“Then he should try not to fall on any more scalpels.”

“His mom died of cancer, you know.”

_There’s something wrong with these brats, too._

There were reasons Levi had applied only to research positions, and situations like this ranked chief amongst them. Instead of responding, he tugged the last threads of neck fascia away from the nerves and leaned in for a closer appraisal of his handiwork. It wasn’t terrible; maybe a bit stringier than he would have liked, but that was more the fault of whoever embalmed it than anything he’d done. With a satisfied exhalation, he pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped his probe and scalpel clean. When he looked up again, it was to find a disheveled and somewhat bemused Hange being dragged toward him by the same group of students he’d just sent away.

“I think the students are supposed to do that much, aren’t they?” she asked, still apparently unsure as to why she was being dragged across the lab an hour before instruction was due to start in the first place. “Levi?”

“I didn’t want to see the head go flying this afternoon, so I took some precautions,” he said simply.

“It looks like you did the entire dissection, though,” she said slowly, shaking off her captors and leaning in for a better look, “Say, Levi! This is amazing!”

“It’s just a basic dissection, nothing fancy,” he waved the praise away.

“No, but it’s-,” she was practically falling over herself trying to adjust her glasses, “You got the entire Ansa Cervicalis out without breaking it!”

“That’s because I didn’t yank at it until it was mangled beyond recognition.”

“No, but it’s…”

“Can we work on our cadaver now?” Scarf-girl demanded impatiently.

“Go find another one to study on,” Hange mumbled, face mere centimeters away from the dissection field, “I need Levi to show me how he’s done-”

“No,” Levi answered before she had the chance to finish, “I have to clean up.”

“You’ll only be getting dirty again!” Hange whined at him, dragging herself away from the cadaver to hang on his sleeve. “You can’t keep a technique like that to yourself!”

“ _Can_ ,” he insisted, yanking his arm away, “Study it yourself and stay off the exam table.”

“So cruel!” she shouted after him as he headed for the sinks, “You can’t hide from me forever, Levi! You’ll show me eventually.”

He smirked a bit that, though he wasn’t entirely sure if it was simple smugness or the thought of her trying to sneak up on him reeking like a formaldehyde-soaked pig that was so amusing it warranted a reaction. Either way, it almost made up for the encroachment on his time.

* * *

  _November 1, 2015_

**Inbox (2)**

o « Isobell               **UGH** – I think they might actually be trying to kill me here. I can’t keep up with…

o « Erwin Smith        **Favor** – Levi, are you in? I need to discuss yesterday’s evacuation order.  Some…  

* * *

 “Get it out of my lab.”

“It's _my_ lab. And it’s only temporary-”

_“Get it out.”_

“Just until she has her own research space again-”

“It’s not happening, get rid of it.”

Whatever asshole had coined the phrase “More fun than a barrel of monkeys!” had clearly never found himself face to face with one. The putrid, stinking barrel (complete with trail of leaking formalin and god-knows-what-else marking the path Erwin had pushed the god-forsaken thing along ) standing in the middle of the laboratory – his own, _personal_ research sanctuary – was many things: revolting, vomitous, and nightmare-inducing to name just a few. But _fun_? Literally anything in the world would have been more fun.

It was a useless phrase, and just as full of shit as Erwin if he thought Levi was going to put up with this.

“You don’t really have a choice in this, Levi.”

“The fuck I don’t! I’m already doing all her class dissections so she doesn’t accidentally rip a limb off the goddamned cadavers, she’s not sharing my lab sp-”

_“LEEEEVI!”_

The barrel stink was bad enough; Levi had no words to describe the stench that flung itself into his arms as he was trying to speak. Burned hair, animal bedding, and seven days worth of unwashed clothes were the most recognizable, but there was something more there, as if she had filled a bucket with old man stink and splashed around in it for a while. Revolted, he tried to worm his way out of her grasp, but found it futile, as she apparently sprouted extra limbs in times of great turmoil.

“They kicked me out of my lab!” Hange sobbed.

“You mean you blew it up,” he spat, trying to speak without inhaling more than absolutely necessary.

“Well, yeah, but now they won’t let me back in! All my babies are dead!”

Levi shot a frantic look at Erwin. He was quickly running out of air and had a sneaking suspicion that even if he dared open his mouth to take a breath, he’d die from inhaling whatever noxious fumes surrounded her. Erwin sighed and pried Hange’s death-grip loose. “Levi has volunteered to share this lab space with you,” he offered while Levi was too busy gasping for breath to argue.

“Really?”

“No,” Levi managed amidst the coughing fit that accompanied being able to smell again.

“Really,” Erwin assured her.

Hange eyed the lab space critically. “I don’t know…”

“There really isn’t room for you anywhere else,” Erwin said quickly, “You use a lot of the same equipment, so we’ll just need to rearrange a bit to fit your mice in here.”

“Mice?” Levi spat, incredulously.

“My babies!” Hange beamed, “My research team.”

“The ones you blew up?”

“Well, obviously not those ones! I’ll be getting new ones just as soon as my expense report gets approved-”

“You’re not keeping them in here to blow up!”

“That’s not what I do!” she stamped her foot angrily, “That was an accident with some drain cleaner and it wouldn’t have even happened if Bean hadn’t run up my leg just then-”

“You let them run around!”

“Well I’m not going to keep them in those tiny cages!”

A long moment of silence passed as the two glared angrily at one another. It was Erwin who eventually broke it, cracking his knuckles and announcing, “Well! Let’s get these shelves cleared out, shall we?”

“Fuck off. Why can’t she take over one of the empty labs of the last round of sackings?”

“They’ve been appropriated by the biomedical engineering department,” Erwin said with a frown, “As will yours be if you tell me to fuck off again.”

“Anyway, Levi,” Hange chuckled, “It’s too sterile in here anyway, it’s not good for you, you know?”

Levi sighed heavily, defeated for the moment. Maybe he could work in the broom closet. Or just…hide in the toilet all day. “You’re not letting the rats run around.”

“They’re mice!” Hange corrected, then quickly added, “And I’ll find something for them.”

“And you’ll shower before work.”

“I’ll try.”

“You _will_.”

“I _will_ try.”           

“I will end you.”

“Alright, alright,” Hange finally conceded, “Showers all around.” She paused, clasping her hands together thoughtfully, “How would you feel about hamster balls?”

_This was going to be the death of him._

* * *

  _November 20, 2015_

**Inbox (1)**

o « Zoe Hange       **LEVI** – You are gonna love what I’ve done with the lab!! You might even come out…

* * *

The structural integrity of corrugated shipping boxes was greater than one might imagine. And so, once Hange had paraded her mountains of research journals and lab equipment (or what remained of them, anyway) into his space, he’d quietly stolen the boxes and built his own…well, _cubicle_ implied some sort of fancy cabinetry that he most definitely _didn’t_ have, but it was a nice enough space, complete with a desk, and it nicely blocked the view of whatever what taking place out… _there_. Hange had immediately taken to calling it Levi’s Fortress of Solitude and doodling obscenities on the outer walls.

"Dr. Ackermann?"

It came with the added bonus of making him invisible from the doorway, which made it all the more difficult for un-motivated students to find him.

“Um? Hello? Jesus Christ, is that a rat?”

“Look at that, there’s tubes all over!”

“Follow it!”

Of course, the Habitrail Hange had erected around the lab to “let her babies run semi-free!” tended to lead them straight to him, anyway.

He closed his laptop and gritted his teeth before they rounded the final corner and stumbled into his lap. He was going to have to rip that thing down and reinstall it in its entirety.

“What am I thinking? _She_ can reinstall it-”

“Are you alright, Dr. Ackerman?”

It shouldn’t have surprised him to see Scarf-girl and friends again - once they’d seen his dissection of the cervical triangle on their cadaver, they’d followed him around the dissection lab, imitating his every stance and taking notes even when he promised them he was only cursing – but they hadn’t been so forthright as to show up on his doorstep, yet.

“I’m fine,” he assured her, “What do you want?”

“Eren is failing,” she said, very matter-of-factly.

“He is.”

“Yes,” she paused, possibly waiting for him to offer some sort of condolences. When none were forthcoming, she carried on. “We need you to go over some of the material for the final exam.”

“Are you two passing?” Levi nodded toward the blond friend.

“Yes.”

“Then why aren’t you two going over the material with him?”

“Because Eren-”

“Does Eren speak?”

“Yes, sir!” Eren shouted, standing to attention.

“Interesting, I wasn’t sure,” Levi snorted. He paused, eyed Eren up and down, then continued, “What do you want to be a doctor for, anyway? You at suck at this sort of thing.”

“I want to cure cancer, sir! So that no one loses their loved ones like I lost my mother, sir!”

“Enough with the shouting, you’re not in the goddamned military,” Levi sneered, “So you want to cure cancer. Noble goal, but how are you going to get there if you can’t pass anatomy on your own?”

“I don’t understand, sir!”

“What’s your plan, kid? How can you advance if you don’t even have a plan?”

“I…don’t…”

“Hey there, campers!” Hange’s voice pierced the air. It took Levi a full thirty seconds to realize she was peering down at them from the top of his cardboard fortress. “I couldn’t help but overhear your little party over here.”

“Dr. Hange, Dr. Ackermann is refusing to help Eren study for the final.”

Hange frowned at this, “That’s not entirely true, though. You’re just talking past each other.” Scarf-girl screwed up her face, preparing to strike back at this, but was mercifully interrupted by Hange leaping down from her cardboard perch. She landed in a crouch at their feet, pausing only a few seconds to grab at her back and let out a silent yelp of pain before starting up again. “Levi’s right: you’re never going to pass the class if you don’t have a plan to remember this stuff.”

“But how do I-”

“Aha!” she shouted, loud enough to make the trio jump, “You just come with me!”

“What?”

“We’re going to have a little lesson with my good friends Reiner and Berthold!”

_Oh, god._ Levi clapped a palm over his eyes. _Not her shitty anatomy models._

“Reiner and Berthold from our class?” Eren asked, obviously confused. Not that Levi blamed him; he’d been confused the first time she’d dragged out the over-sized toddler toys, too.

“No, no, they’re just common names!”

“Why is that one wearing armor?”

“Oh that’s just from Halloween. Hold on.”

Levi winced at the loud clattering of plate armor against the linoleum floor. He jumped to his feet – she wasn’t going to fuck up the last vestige of usable research space he left, so help him. He rounded the cardboard wall to find her standing on a table, waggling the arm of the taller of the two models like it was a Ribbon Dancer.

“Now, here’s Ol’ Bertl’s arm, right?” she said, “You can look at it one of two ways: either it’s a collection of individual parts that just happen to sit next to one another, or it’s a system that works together to do complex things. Which is it?”

“Well,” Eren said, carefully avoiding a silicone palm to the face, “It’s a system, right?”

“Exactly!” Hange beamed, “Now, tell me how you've been studying the muscles in the arm?”

“I memorize their name, function, and the nerve that innervates them-”

“NO!” she jumped from the table, “This is why you’re failing! You can’t attack a complex system as a collection of individual parts! Now! Look what I’ve got over here-”

This was going to take a while, Levi decided, judging by the looks of confusion and burgeoning terror on the students’ faces. He ought to get back to work – she had them well enough occupied for the moment.

And yet, there was something almost hypnotic about the way she leapt from one point to the next (both physically and metaphorically speaking), the way she threw every ounce of herself into describing the significance of the flexor and extensor tubercles, the way she slowly seemed to melt onto the table as she described how well and truly lazy nerves are, only ever wanting to branch when absolutely necessary and refusing to innervate more than one region of the arm, finally slumping onto the ground with a death rattle-

Well, ok, that last one was still pretty weird. But the students were enthralled, which was far more than he could say about any lecture _he’d_ ever given. _And_ she addressed them by name. When had she learned those?

Before he realized it, the students were begging their way to the door – it was 3 o’clock and time for their final lecture. Hange seemed less interested in their attendance. “There’s still more if you want to go over it!” she bellowed after them.

“Thank you, Dr. Hange! We should really go to class, though! Thank you so much! You’ve been amazing!”

“Alright, well, I’ve got more!”

“Thank you!”

“If you’re sure-”

“Let them go,” Levi said quietly, stepping away from the wall he’d spent the past hour and a half leaning against. “They should be in class for appearances anyway.”

“I suppose…”

“What are you so depressed for? They probably won’t fail now. That was the point, wasn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but-”

“Then this afternoon was a success.”

“I guess-”

“And a big one at that.”

“I…wait, it was?”

“Did I just say so? Anyway, if you come down to the lab with me-”

“You’ll show me your super-duper-awesome-sauce dissection technique?!”

“I-” Levi sighed, wondering what he’d just gotten himself into. “I suppose. Come on, Shitty Glasses.”

* * *

  _December 20, 2015_

**Inbox (1)**

o « Isobell            **Re: Merry Christmas Turdball** – *This is an automated message*  I am out of the office...

o « Eren Jaeger     **I PASSED!!!!**  - Thank you so much for the extra help with dissection before the final Dr...

* * *

  _December 24, 2015_

Inbox (0)

* * *

Christmas had never been Levi’s favorite holiday. It might have meant more to him had he ever spent more than one in the same home, with the same family, but the foster care system he’d grown up in was a bitch like that. It had been fun for a few years to trade presents and get stinking drunk with his graduate school roommates, but… _well_.

It was no good getting drunk on his own.

It was also no good sitting around his studio apartment, staring at the blank walls and wondering if he ought to start talking to himself just to pass the time. He needed busy-work of some sort, if only to help block out the incessant caroling coming from a few doors down, and there was one truly great place to find _that_.

The university was eerie enough during active hours, with its outdated (and probably structurally unsound) architecture and flower beds filled with bare trees and winter-dried grasses.  Christmas eve found it practically abandoned, with only the few battered cars of tenure-track zombies littering the parking lots. Levi walked quickly across the barren pathways to the Health Science Offices.

The hallway to his office was as desolate as the rest of the campus, save for the chittering and skittering of mice he knew (oh fucking _god_ , did he _know_ ) had escaped from their Habitrail into the air ducts. Twice he nearly jumped out of his skin at the noise they made – they didn’t sound nearly this loud against the background din of a normal day. As he neared the doorway, though, it because obvious there was something more adding to the racket.

He stopped short of opening the door, feeling the knob throb and thrash against his palm, and swore. _She was here_. But, it wasn’t as if he was going to particularly mind the company tonight, anyway. He threw the door open and immediately staggered backward from the multisensory assault that pummeled him.

Every single fluorescent light, every incandescent lamp, every microscope and every monitor of every bit of equipment was turned to maximum brightness. High-volume death metal blared from one of the computers, which had apparently been equipped with a subwoofer to really help _drill_ the bass line into the flooring, walls, and cabinetry (none of which seemed to mind too much – they all hummed and thumped right along without any complaint…the glassware _inside_ the cabinets was another story). There were piles of empty pizza boxes and carboard take-out containers littering the floor, and a literal sea of empty Starbucks cups stacked on the desks.  And of course, in the middle of it all sat Her Royal Repugnance, covered in god-knows how many days’ worth of grease and sweat stains and smelling for all the world as if she’d crawled out of a decaying elephant's asshole.

All that was missing was a legion of flies darting around her head, but they had probably been scared away by the music.

“ _Oi_ ,” he shouted, “ _Is this Rudolph the Red Nosed Goddamned Reindeer?_ ”

He wasn’t sure why he’d expected her to respond, much less notice his presence in the midst of the hurricane of sound and light, but she predictably stayed glued to her computer screen. He considered sneaking off to his cardboard sanctuary and duct taping a pair of noise-canceling headphones to his head, but he but was unsure they were up to a task this monumental. Instead, he found the powerstrip most of the computer equipment was plugged into and yanked it from the wall. The monitors flickered out as the floor finally stopped shaking.

“Wha-” Hange fell backwards from her chair, then flailed to her knees, slapping at the keyboard with a frantic keening. “No, no, _nooooooooo_ -”

“It’ll have auto-saved,” Levi grumbled, swinging the power cord like a yo-yo.

“Levi?” she cried, struggling to her feet, “Why would you- That was my National Institute of Health grant application!”

“It’ll have auto-saved,” Levi repeated, “I changed the settings after last time you-”

He didn’t get to finish, because by that time she had found her feet and charged directly into his ribcage.  If the hit hadn't knock the wind from him, the fall to the floor surely did.

“ _How could you?_ ” she screamed, straddling his chest and clawing at his face, “ _That was five days’ worth of work!_ ”

“I told you,” Levi managed between short gasps of air meant to bring in air as quickly and scentlessly as possible, “It. Auto-saved.”

“ _YOU DON’T KNOW THAT!_ ”

It was getting difficult to breathe, and all the more so for the energy he was having to expend dodging her increasingly frantic blows. He rolled, kicked, and somehow managed to get back to his feet, but she followed just as quickly and he found himself banging across the counter tops, scattering papers and books and shattering years' worth of specimen collection.

They finally hit the ground with a thud, just beside the emergency shower.

_Finally, a solution to both his problems._

He yanked the chain and was slammed back into the ground for the third time that evening as water dumped from the nozzle.  They lay there for a long moment, sopping and sobbing, until Levi finally pulled himself to his feet and stomped over to the sink. It took him a moment to find it piled up in the newly created disaster-zone, but he eventually fished out a bottle of hand soap and tossed it toward the shower. “Wash,” he instructed, “You’ll feel better.”

She caught the bottle, but otherwise remained motionless, slumped against the water pipes. “How could you do that?” she murmured.

“I told you,” Levi said again, shoving the power cord roughly back into the socket, “I set up your damned computer to auto-save after the last time you lost all your data. _Wash_.” He made sure she at least made an effort at pumping some soap into her hand, then stormed over to her computer and rebooted it.

“Is it there?” she asked weakly. “Read me the last sentence.”

Levi rolled his eyes and tapped at her keyboard, bringing up the last document saved. “Them are necessarily the key to the epiploic…” he trailed off, looking at her like she’d lost her mind. “This is just gibberish.”

“No, no, I know what it was supposed to say,” she assured him, with a smile and deep exhalation, “It’s all there.”

Levi glanced between the empty coffee cups, the pizza boxes, the deep black bags under her eyes, and the ass-print left on her chair. He could have kicked himself for not seeing it sooner. “Have you left here since the end of the semester?” he spat.

“I had work to do.”

“Tell me you at least got up to take a shit.”

“Do you see a chamber pot?” she laughed weakly, “Of course I did. I washed my hands before returning to work and everything.”

Levi didn’t smile. “Have you slept?”

“Sort of?” she paused, looking confused, “I mean, I think I did a little bit.”

This was a blatant lie, Levi decided, watching the way her hands sort of jerked across her hair in a mimic of washing without ever making contact, the way her eyes blinked rapidly, glazed over and unfocused. He sighed irritably, then stomped his way over to the shower and lathered up the soap she was having so much trouble with.

“What are you doing?”

“Washing your hair.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s filthy and you’re too stupid-tired to do it properly.”

“Mrphh.”

“That’s what I thought.” He finished lathering the soap through her hair – decidedly _not_ thinking about the amount of grime now coating his own hands – then hauled her up and over to the sink to rinse. The emergency shower had already made enough of a mess of the floor. He ran the water till it rinsed clear from the ends of her hair (which took, if he was being honest, a disturbingly long time) and tossed her a clean lab coat to dry off.

“It’s not very absorbent,” she whined.

“So stick your head in the fume hood and turn the fan on.” He was mostly kidding, but she returned a look that threatened tears if he kept digging. He sighed, “Sorry. I think I have a towel here somewhere, I just have to dig through-”

“That’s alright,” she smiled weakly, “I think I just…my caffeine buzz is wearing off.”

“Get your clothes off, before you pass out,” Levi insisted, knowing there wasn’t much else keeping her awake.

“Are you gonna watch?” she practically slurred.

“What are you, drunk now?” Levi rolled his eyes and tossed her a spare pair of surgical scrubs from the closet, “They’re brand new.”

“Lucky me,” she grinned and began unceremoniously stripping away her wet clothes. Levi stared at the ceiling in a vain effort to give her the privacy she couldn't have cared less about. He looked back down as he heard her settle back at her desk and scoffed loudly. She’d managed the pants without difficulty, but only one arm had made it through its designated hole. The other hung limply through the body of the shirt, tugging the fabric tight against her back as she slumped, snoring, against her keyboard.

_Dumbass._

He covered her shoulders with a spare lab coat and set to finding a dry pair of clothes for himself. Cleaning up the godforsaken mess his lab had become could wait that long.

It was four hours before she woke again – not nearly long enough to make up a five-day sleep deficit, but as her eyes flew open and she announced quite forcefully, “Food. Now,” Levi found he couldn’t really argue with the sentiment.

“There’s a Chinese take-out place a few blocks away that’s open all night,” she assured him, eyeing the neon 1:00 flashing on her desk clock. Considering the number of take-out containers he’d just hauled to the dumpster, he had no reason to doubt her.

It was unseasonably warm for December 24th, and even moreso for one o’clock in the morning. The handful of blocks passed by quickly, until they were greeted by the warm light streaming from Chef Chan’s Neighborhood Café.

“Nicer than I expected, for being open all hours,” Levi grumbled as they pushed through the doors.

“Yeah, you're a little under-dressed with the spandex bike shorts,” Hange agreed.

Levi pulled his jacket tighter around him and kicked at her heels. “Some asshole has my only spare pair of scrubs,” he hissed, “It’s not like I keep tons of clothes around the office.”

“Maybe you should, the way you flood it without hesitation.”

“Shut the f-” he cut himself off as an attendant wandered to the front to take their order. “Yes, hi, this will be an order to go.”

Two o’clock in the morning wasn’t much colder than one o’clock, and they soon found themselves slurping down noodles amidst the night air on the campus quad. The sidewalk lights still lent an eerie glow to the empty buildings, but it was better than the garish, twinkling fairy lights sucking up energy around the rest of the town.

“Why the hell would you stay awake working for five days straight?” Levi managed between mouthfuls.

“I was trying to get my grant applications done so I would hopefully be out of Erwin's lab and your hair by next fall,” Hange admitted, not bothering to swallow first. “Figured that would make you happy.”

“Idiot.”

“How am I the idiot?”

“You just are.”

“Right.” She slurped a few mouthfuls without talking, then scrunched up her face and turned back to him, “If it’s been five days, that makes today Christmas.”

“Your counting skills are truly impressive.”

“What the hell are you doing her- Oh, are you Jewish?” she looked mortified.

“What? No- Well…” Levi exhaled heavily, “I don’t know.”

“You gonna expound on that, or just leave it hanging there?” Hange wondered after a moment passed in silence.

“Grew up in foster care,” Levi said gruffly, “No idea who my parents are.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He closed the lid of the box and leaned back into the bench. “This time of year blows.”

She snorted at this. “I’ll drink to that…we should get some booze.”

“No friends or family for you around here either?” he wondered.

“Family’s not far,” she said slowly, “But…you know.”

“How the fuck would I?”

“Haven’t seen them in years. My parents aren’t not really the kind of people who are enthusiastic about having a kid who studies evolutionary adaptations and desecrates bodies, you know?”

“Is it a religious thing?”

“Partly,” she nodded, “And friends…well, I lost contact with most of them after grad school and I guess I’ve been a little bit…well…up my own ass with research since then.”

“That’s putting it lightly.” Levi snorted, but in reality he was getting well acquainted with this phenomenon. Even for someone who had bounced around his entire life and pretended not to give a fuck, the isolation of this job was getting to him. He’d never admit to loneliness, but then again, here was eating midnight noodles with a woman who, until recently, he would have just as soon punched in the face.

Hange was still carrying on. “I suppose I could have spent the weekend with Erwin’s family, but…”

“But?” Levi shoved his darker thoughts away. He wasn’t so shallow as to feign fondness just use someone for their company.

“But have you ever _seen_ him after his sixth egg nog? It’s like the Tasmanian Devil had a baby with Magic Mike and someone left it in charge of the Christmas lights.”

Now _there_ was an image Levi wasn't going to be able to bleach from his mind any time soon. “Shit, maybe we _should_ get some booze.”

“Yeah I think so,” Hange agreed, yawning widely.

“Are you gonna cash out on me now?”

“Mmm, no,” she hummed, siddling closer to him on the bench, “I just need to rest my eyes.”

“Do it inside, it’s getting colder.”

“Okay,” she said, settling her head against his shoulder.

“Oi,” Levi poked her in the side, “Hange.” There was no response, save for quiet snoring. Levi rolled his eyes, but ruffled a hand through her hair.

_There was something wrong with this one._

 


End file.
